


i don't know why, but i feel conned.

by thicklykeen



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst, Car Accidents, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Heavy Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mentions of Car Accidents, Night Terrors, light Violence, light gore, mentions of trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 03:37:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18380174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thicklykeen/pseuds/thicklykeen
Summary: keith kogane has always been afraid of the dark





	i don't know why, but i feel conned.

**Author's Note:**

> i know this ends very prematurely, but this has been sitting in my drafts for almost a year and i reread it tonight and like??? bro it was fuckin good 
> 
> but yeah heres the last fic i will ever post in the voltron fandom
> 
> OH I ALSO DIDNT PROOFREAD THIS LMAO

Keith has always been afraid of the Dark.

He doesn’t know where the fear stemmed from. Maybe it’s from the nights he spent alone, in the Dark, thrashing around on his bed as nightmares consumed him. The Dark has never treated him well, she always has cold hands and a grip on his dreams. And with a snap of the Dark’s fingers, she can turn every candy sweet dream to a hellish nightmare. She sits watching from a corner as Keith navigates his nightmares, tears welled in his eyes, blood on his hands. She’s cold and calculating, but she wakes him up; she never lets him see the conclusions of his actions. 

Dark has freezing hands and an elegant dark dress.

He’s never seen Dark look so beautiful, but as she stands in front of his bed, as she sits on the edge and drifts her fingers up and down Keith’s blanket, she seems a little more human. But it doesn’t fix the fear she’s embedded into Keith’s heart. It’s a terror he should have abandoned long ago, there’s no need for night terrors when there’s a warm body beside him. A body of protection. Lance lays beside Keith, and Dark is exceptionally close to him tonight, favoring Lance’s side of the bed instead of Keith’s. Her fingernails are short, it’s a new detail Keith notices. 

“You cut your nails,” he says. His voice comes out quiet, he doesn’t want to wake his partner. He thinks holding a conversation with Dark will make her leave. Scare her that she’s finally being acknowledged, but she doesn’t even flinch when Keith opens his mouth. She nods and looks up at him, away from the red blanket where his partners legs are.

“Yes,” she says. Her voice is smooth. She speaks in low tones and sounds like silk and warm honey. She stands, turning her back to the bed. Slowly, she makes her way to Keith’s side of the bed. She’s not wearing any shoes, Keith realizes, and then he doesn’t know if she ever does. He only pays attention to her face and hands, the things that chill him to the bone, but tonight, she doesn’t seem in the mood to scare. Keith should recognize her as human. Maybe she was, once, but all she is now is a shadow of something much darker, much bigger. She stares at Keith with curious eyes.

“Tell me about yourself,” she says. Keith tilts his head.

“I thought you knew everything about me?” Keith asks. Dark sighs and begins to braid her dark hair. 

“I know what you’re scared of, but I don’t know you,” she says. Keith thought that knowing his fears meant she would have him figured out, know every inch of him, know his mind like she knows the back of her own palm. But she doesn’t. She only knows his fears. Keith is afraid of telling her anymore, she only deserves to know his fears. His fears are how Dark torments him each night. Could Dark turn his aspirations into nightmares?

“I’ll tell you about me,” she says. She’s finished braiding her hair. Dark can turn her full attention onto Keith now. He gulps.

“What is there to know?” Keith asks. Dark chuckles.

“Not much, I suppose,” she says. 

“Then why I should I tell you anything?” 

“Because even though you hate me, even though I’m the one you despise, I’ve always been there for you,” she says. And she’s right. Keith digs his fingernails into his palms, leaving crescent moons. He refuses to tell her anything, though. He won’t. He can’t. She’ll use the information to manipulate him into hating his own dreams. So he sits, refusing to speak. Dark looks at him with piercing blue eyes. They look like Lance’s.

He lays back down, turning on his side. He doesn’t hear Dark slink away.

 

Keith knows Lance isn’t afraid of the Dark.

He’s never met her in his sleep, but he’s met, and flirted with, her personal friend, Death. Keith’s never met death. He’s thought about it, really, truly thought about it, but never made the deal. His boyfriend, though, knows Death very well. Lance says Death is kind, but Keith doesn’t understand how a person, a thing, that takes parents away from children and children away from parents can be kind. Lance had almost died in a car crash with his best friend Allura. The crash had happened about five months before Keith met Lance. 

While Lance had been open to him about Death and his crash, Keith had never told Lance about his fear of the Dark. Keith isn’t even sure if Lance knows about his fear of the Dark, but he doesn’t ask. Lance never asks why he’s so exhausted sometimes. 

Today feels different, though. He talked to Dark, made eye contact with her, and it felt good looking Dark in the eyes. Taking her on face first. It’s funny what a challenge can do. Lance oozes energy, he carries it with him everywhere. To Lance, energy is like a bottle of water left untouched. It disappears within a few days, but you refill it anyways thinking you’ll drink it. 

Keith finds Lance on the couch, a mug of coffee and The Legend of Sleepy Hollow in his lap. He looks half asleep on his palm, reading glasses hanging low on his nose. As much as Lance loves books, they make him tired. No amount of coffee can keep Lance awake if you give him a book. Even audiobooks lull him to sleep, unless they’re read by a shitty narrator. 

It’s the first thing Keith learned about Lance; that he loved books. While Keith found solace in music, making it and listening to it, Lance found comfort in books. Keith’s never been a reader, still wouldn’t consider himself one, but when Lance reads to him at night it helps him sleep a little easier. 

It’s the thing he loves the most about Lance. How he calms him like music.

 

Keith wakes up again, with a little more movement and loud gasping than he’d like to admit, but he wakes up. Keith spots Dark in the corner, waiting. For what, he doesn’t know. But she’s waiting. Lance stirs, sitting up a little and rubs his eyes.

“You okay?” He asks.

“Yeah. Just… Just a nightmare. You can go back to sleep,” Keith says, softly. Scared that if he says it to loud Dark will hop into action and whisk Lance away in her arms. He knows she can’t do that, not in real life, anyways. She’s not Death, not even close to it. She doesn’t dance on unsteady cliffs or jump from planes. But she does wait in hospital rooms like Death, visiting only briefly, avoiding family if possible. Once Keith knows Lance is asleep, he asks Dark a question.

“How did you meet?” Keith asks. It sparks her attention, she puts down the photo of Lance’s family she was admiring and turns to Keith.

“Who? You?” She asks. Her brow is raised and her hands are held in front of her. She looks like a business woman in her skirt and blouse. She still doesn’t have shoes on.  
“Not me. Death. How did you meet Death?” Keith says. For a moment, she seems taken by surprise. Like it’s a question she’s not used to. But Keith thinks Dark isn’t used to getting questions at all. Keith thinks that Dark is used to the cold treatment that he had given her yesterday, simply turning away from her and going back to sleep, trying to escape her freezing hands. 

“I think we’ve always known each other. Word of mouth or by ear, I don’t know. Death’s a mystery, she’s shrouded by beliefs. Your friend here, he knows her quite well if I’m not mistaken?” Dark asks, pointing to Lance. Keith feels the urge to huddle Lance away from her, cover him up and keep him away from the finger she points at him. He doesn’t, though.

“Yeah. He almost died a few months ago. Before I knew him. Car crash with his best friend,” Keith says. He realizes he’s opened up too late and he wants to turn back time. She can use this against him. Dark can haunt Keith’s dreams with Lance’s dead body, with the scene of the crash, a crash he didn’t see, but any information is information she can use against him.

“Why do you fear me so much, Keith?” Dark asks. Keith doesn’t answer. He lays back down, covering himself with the red blanket and snuggles into Lance’s back. 

 

Dark doesn’t visit for a few nights. When she comes back, though, she comes full force. She unloads the worst Keith can imagine. She makes Keith see his boyfriend’s dead body, see the crash. Sees Lance’s best friend still alive, frantically trying to retrieve her phone and call 911. It’s too late, though. Everyone but Allura seems to know it in that moment. Dark nows it, Keith knows it, the world around them knows it. 

Keith fights back a sob when he wakes up this time. He sees Dark, she’s standing in front of the full body mirror in the room and watches Keith through it. Keith chokes out a sob as quiet as he can, but it’s loud. It’s so loud. Lance wakes up, a groggy victim of Keith’s night terrors like Shiro once was. Lance hasn’t had the worst of it yet, though. He hasn’t heard the screaming. Keith doesn’t want Lance to experience the screaming. It’s a horrifying thing to witness. Screaming features thrashing and that might get someone hurt. 

“Hey, hey babe, I’ve got you,” Lance says, pulling Keith into a hug. Keith continues to sob, waves and waves of emotion washing over him. He feels like he’s drowning and he can’t break the surface. Lance continues to shush him and run his hands through his hair. He doesn’t notice how the bed dips when Dark takes a seat on Lance’s side of the bed, a curious look on her face. Slowly, Keith stops crying, and Lance continues to talk to him, trying to lure him back to sleep. It works, eventually, but it’s well into three in the morning when it does. Dark stands to take her leave.

“Leave him alone,” Lance says. Dark didn’t know he could see her. She sighs and turns towards him. “Please.”

“I don’t think I can,” Dark says. She turns again. She’s gone before Lance can say anything else to her. 

 

They eat breakfast in silence.

Keith is irritated and Lance is disappointed. He’ll never tell Keith he talked to Dark, it seems something too personal. Keith looks so tired today. Lance wants to tell him to just call in sick to work, that he’ll wrap him in seven blankets and watch Netflix with him. That won’t work and Lance knows it won’t. Keith drowns himself in work when he’s upset, it’s the second thing Lance learned about Keith. 

It’s one of the things Lance hates about Keith. 

 

The lamp is still on when Lance goes to sleep. 

Keith’s lost himself in music today. He’s doing anything to keep his mind off of last night, but every time he blinks his eyes he sees Lance’s mangled body in the fucking car. He sees Allura, bloody and injured, trying to grab her cellphone that’s so cracked no one in the dream knows if it’ll work. Her silver hair has dark red dots in it, and Keith can remember everything so vividly he wants to scream. He sees the way Lance’s head hangs. Sees the deep gashes among his body. When Allura finally gets her cellphone, it doesn’t work. Because of fucking course her phone doesn’t work, of course that fucking cellphone is gonna be the reason Lance dies. 

But it’s not real.

It’s not real.

Lance is behind Keith, on their bed. Safe. Asleep. Keith wipes tears from his eyes, he’s not going to cry again. He stands quietly from his chair and makes his way toward the bathroom. He doesn’t know why, he doesn’t need to use the bathroom, doesn’t need to shower, but the bathroom brings a sense of security. 

Dark’s warm honey voice greets him. 

“Hello,” she says. Her voice seems more syrupy than usual, sweeter. Keith doesn’t like it.

“Hey,” Keith says. Dark has evaded his safe space. He has nowhere to run. Dark’s got him cornered. Right where she wants him, he supposes. 

“You should call me something,” Dark says.

“I do. I call you Dark,” Keith says.

“Not that. I mean like a name, Keith. Give me a name,” she schuckles. It’s soft like cotton. Giving Dark a name would make her seem more human. Keith doesn’t even know if he wants to be on a first name basis with Dark, even if she’s already on one with him. 

“Cordelia,” Keith says. It’s a beautiful name, the first one that popped up into Keith’s head, but it’s nice. Dark takes a moment.

“I like it,” Cordelia says. 

Now they’re on a first name basis.

 

Keith doesn’t remember falling asleep, and definitely not falling asleep on the bed. He’s thankful he ended up on the bed, because if he did fall asleep in the bathroom, he would’ve fell asleep in the tub. He didn’t watch Cordelia leave, he never gets to watch Cordelia leave, but a cold chill runs over Keith’s spine. She’s never completely gone.

Keith makes a start into the kitchen, it’s almost lunchtime and Keith is glad it’s his day off. Lance isn’t here, sadly, so there’s no soft morning kiss or good food waiting for him. There might be leftovers in the fridge, Keith guesses, he could be wrong, though. He looks around the kitchen for a few minutes before he gives up hope on leftovers and makes himself some ramen. 

Keith’s day continues on like normal. It’s boring and when Lance comes home they have dinner and watch movies. Too soon is it night time. Keith doesn’t try to sleep this time. He waits for Cordelia, and she seems to come faster. 

“I can’t help what I do,” she says, standing in front of him. Keith doesn’t believe her, doesn’t want to believe her. But she sounds so honest.

“Why?”

She chuckles. “If only I knew.”

“Sounds like a cheap excuse,” Keith says. Cordelia frowns.

“I’m offended you would think so lowly of me.”

“Are you surprised?”

“Well, I suppose not. I’ve shown you unimaginable things. Horrible things. I don’t have words to express how sorry I am, not do I have words to express what I’ve been holding back,” Cordelia says.

“Unimaginable things.”

“Horrors. Terrors from every corner of your life. Things you don’t remember, but I do. Keith, I’ve been protecting you ever since you were a baby,” she says. She pulls at her luminous dress. The white dots glow like stars against the black satin, and there’s nothing telling Keith that they aren’t stars. 

“Protecting me? You’ve only ever seemed to hurt me,” he says. Cordelia gives him a grim smile and grabs his hand. Her hands have a little more warmth in them then he’s used to.

“Protection can be a horrible thing sometimes, my love. Death and Lance and I, we’re protecting you. You never see Death, she comes in fleeting glances. She’s in the corners. We watch and we aid; we protect.”

“You’re using my trauma against me.”

“It’s the best I can do.”

**Author's Note:**

> follow me on tumblr @funkyhypnotic


End file.
